Borrowed Joy: How Future Grace Steadies Your Soul - 2 Samuel 7:8-11 Series

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Introduction

How are you doing this morning? Are you up? Or are you kind of down? And if you are up, or down – why is that? What kind of effect do the ups and downs of life have on you? Do you have an even keel – untouched by all the craziness? Or are you more like a can of pop – where too many ups and downs build up pressure that eventually explodes all over everyone? One of the things we are going to learn from this text today is how to gain greater stability, so that instead of being jerked around by the events of life, you find that through all kinds of circumstances your joy level stays on a fairly level plain. That happens when you have hope. And this passage is one of the greatest chapters in all the Bible for instilling hope.

2 Samuel 7 is famous because it is the chapter where God first gives what is known as the Davidic Covenant. There are several key covenants God made with various people throughout redemptive history. The three that stand out as being especially important: the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses, and this one with David. To Abraham God promised to make his offspring into a nation and give them the Promised Land. In the Mosaic Covenant God promised blessing to those who were loyal to His law and curses to those who were disloyal. And now comes the greatest of all – the covenant with David.

So far in the book of 2 Samuel the pace has been very fast. The narrator has us zooming along through all kinds of events as the years fly by. In just six chapters we have seen numerous wars and murders, assassinations, the rise and fall of Ish-Bosheth, two coronations of David, and all the adventures of capturing Jerusalem and setting up the capital and bringing the Ark there.

But here in chapter 7 that all changes. Very little happens in this chapter, and the narrator does not really say much. Instead of describing a lot of events, this chapter is mostly dialogue. David speaks, Nathan speaks, God speaks, and then David speaks again – the narrator says almost nothing. And the whole chapter covers a conversation one day and a conversation the next day and that’s it. When a Bible writer slows down like that the implication is that he is showing us something that is especially important. If your tour guide has been speeding along at 80 mph, but then slows down to 5 mph in one area, that tells you something. This is an area you really need to see. The inspired writer is telling us that this material is especially important.

And if you doubt that, just look at verse 13.

13 I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.'"

Three times God uses the word “forever.” That is huge, because when you make promises using the word “forever,” and you are God, by making the statement you are shaping eternity. Do you realize what is happening in this chapter? God is shaping the landscape of what will be taking place a trillion years from now. A trillion years from now, and 100 trillion years after that, God will be busy carrying out the things He is promising in this chapter.

2 Samuel 7 is easily one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible. Scholars have called this chapter the theological center of the entire Old Testament. And in case you miss it here in 2 Samuel 7, the whole story is told again in even more detail in 1 Chronicles 17. Then again in 1 Chronicles 22, then again in 1 Chronicles 28, and again in 1 Kings 8. And the number of times this promise is referred to is way too many to list.

God’s promise to David in this chapter becomes the cornerstone of the hope of the people of God from this time forward. If you want to increase the level of hope in your heart, this is the chapter to study. It is the foundation for almost all of the Messianic hope of the Old Testament. What I mean by that is pretty much everything the Old Testament says about the Messiah is rooted in this chapter.

And not only that, but in many ways this chapter is the beginning point for the whole concept of future hope. Think about it – what kind of future hope was there before 2 Samuel 7? In Genesis 3:15 there is a promise that God would someday crush the head of the serpent, but no specifics are given. God promised Abraham that he would have a lot of descendents and that all nations would be blessed through him. But that is still pretty vague. It is a beginning point, but it really does not say much about the end times. The main focus of what God promised Abraham is that someday his decedents would get the Promised Land - which they got under Joshua.